Fish criticizes
Sam Harris
and
Richard Dawkins for their confidence that natural explanations will be found
for currently not-well-understood phenomena of human behavior and consciousness.
He invokes
Francis S. Collins to name a scientist who would

argue that physical processes cannot account for the universal presence of
moral impulses like altruism, “the truly selfless giving of oneself to others”
with no expectation of a reward. How can there be a naturalistic [i.e.,
evolutionary] explanation of that?

Fish, let alone Collins, shouldn't need an economist to answer, "easy." Behaviors that don't seem to maximize individual fitness but may improve the
population fitness aren't a problem for evolutionary explanations. (Elaboration
of this concept, I gather, is Dawkins's major contribution to evolutionary
theory.) ...

The Darwinian explanation is that the behavior makes the group better off
despite (maybe) having cost to some individuals, which frankly doesn't sound
facially absurd under, say, a Divine Selection Hypothesis where "good works"
facilitate more pleasant after-lives. (An economist might argue that it's not
necessarily true that altruism necessarily is "costly" to the individual; at a
minimum, I would argue specifically that it narrows the real scope of
source-of-moral-behavior conundrums.) More to the point, Dawkins makes no claims
that obviously can't be explained in terms of neuron interconnections and brain
chemistry...

Robert Waldmann follows with:

Aunts, Fish, Ants, by Robert Waldmann: ATBozzo links to me
here... Thanks for link. Fish is, well fish. The possible evolutionary explanation of
altruism is quite different from the selection of sickle trait. The generally
favored view is called kin selection". The argument is that if we help a random
person (more generally organism in our species which we meet) we do something
very different from helping a random organism in our species, since we are more
likely to meet our kin than our non relations.

If there is an altruism allele, it can be selected. Acts of pure altruism
reduce he chance of reproducing (or else it wouldn't be pure altruism) but
increase the chance of reproducing of the beneficiary. If the beneficiary is the
brother of the altruist, he has a 50% chance of carrying the allele which is
therefore 50% selected via the act of altruism, a nephew, niece aunt or uncle
25% a cousin 12.5% etc.

The "result" of very early theoretical population biology that true altruism
is not selected was based on the assumption, made for simplicity, of random
matching so an altruist was as likely to help someone who was unrelated as she
was to help a first cousin.

Now, an allele which causes us to recognize the exact degree of relation to
another organism and callibrate our altruism would drive out simple altruism in
evolution. It is impossible to imagine how exactly such an allele could do this
(especially if you go back a few million years and consider our ancestors who
couldn't talk or count or anything).

An implication of the evolutionary theory of altruism is that extreme
altruism will occur among animals who are more closely related to their sisters
than to their daughters. The most extreme altruism possible from an evolutionary
point of view is to refrain from even attempting to reproduce -- like a worker
ant or worker bee. They are (as you guessed) more closely related to their
sisters (the queens) than to their possible offspring sharing 3/4ths of genes
not just 1/2 because males of the species are haploid (only 1 copy of each gene
like our sperm or women's ova).

For someone who has seen a worker ant to claim that altruism proves that
evolutionary biology can't explain everything is for someone to make a total
fool of himself.

A few minutes of research on the topic would have made it clear to Fish that
he was defending a statement which is ignorant or dishonest (Collins may know
the human genome but is less familiar with the population biology literature
than with the incentives for scientists to be overly humble about the power of
science). I dare say it probably did, since defending dishonest ignoramuses is
what Fish likes best.

Now Fish's claim is that materialistic reductionistic science has failed (so
far) because the molecular basis of altruism is not known. This is a much more
reasonable claim than the claim that altruism could not be selected (Bozzo
responds very effectively back at marginal utility). I will just add some Nit
Picklering noting that Fish neglects to mention the observed effects of oxytocin
(the hormone which triggers labor) in voles.

Dave Barry is a more reliable source for information on the subject (search
for vole or muskrat and, sad to say, The Economist is not run by altruists).

Fish criticizes
Sam Harris
and
Richard Dawkins for their confidence that natural explanations will be found
for currently not-well-understood phenomena of human behavior and consciousness.
He invokes
Francis S. Collins to name a scientist who would

argue that physical processes cannot account for the universal presence of
moral impulses like altruism, “the truly selfless giving of oneself to others”
with no expectation of a reward. How can there be a naturalistic [i.e.,
evolutionary] explanation of that?

Fish, let alone Collins, shouldn't need an economist to answer, "easy." Behaviors that don't seem to maximize individual fitness but may improve the
population fitness aren't a problem for evolutionary explanations. (Elaboration
of this concept, I gather, is Dawkins's major contribution to evolutionary
theory.) ...

The Darwinian explanation is that the behavior makes the group better off
despite (maybe) having cost to some individuals, which frankly doesn't sound
facially absurd under, say, a Divine Selection Hypothesis where "good works"
facilitate more pleasant after-lives. (An economist might argue that it's not
necessarily true that altruism necessarily is "costly" to the individual; at a
minimum, I would argue specifically that it narrows the real scope of
source-of-moral-behavior conundrums.) More to the point, Dawkins makes no claims
that obviously can't be explained in terms of neuron interconnections and brain
chemistry...

Robert Waldmann follows with:

Aunts, Fish, Ants, by Robert Waldmann: ATBozzo links to me
here... Thanks for link. Fish is, well fish. The possible evolutionary explanation of
altruism is quite different from the selection of sickle trait. The generally
favored view is called kin selection". The argument is that if we help a random
person (more generally organism in our species which we meet) we do something
very different from helping a random organism in our species, since we are more
likely to meet our kin than our non relations.